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I use a piece of software called 'Nero'. It's great. It odes all sorts like converting to MP3's, copying CD's, compiling your own CD's, copying data and all sorts of other stuff which i haven't really looked into yet. All you do to convert to MP3 is put your CD in the computer, click on 'convert to Nero Audio MP3 Files' and then it does it in a bout 3 minutes and stores them on your computer which you can then copy back onto another blank CD (you can usually get about 150 MP3 songs on one CD of an average size) send them to an MP3 player or ipod or whatever or you can just keep them on your hard drive. It's a really good programme. You should have a look into it. If you don't have it, you probably will already have something on your computer that you can use though. Have a look through any media programmes you have and see if they have anything about converting audio files. Hope that helps.

Well then i wouldn't have a clue how to do it properly but you could always play them on the record player and record the sound onto a midi player and then put them onto the computer (or even directly onto the computer if you have a decent enough mic) and then change them to MP3 files. I would reckon that is the cheapest way to do it, though there is probably a much more efficient way of doing it. Sorry i can't help you any better.

You basically only need one cable to connect the amplifier output (Line Out, Tape Out, Rec Out, or thelike) to your soundcard's input (Line In). You keep the record player connected to the amplifier as if you'd like to listen to your records (because you need the built in pre-amp in order to get the right level and sound). Once you've connected the amp to your computer, make sure the Line In of your soundcard is active (look if you have some sort of a software mixer). You need a recording software which records wav-files. There are a lot of programms (freeware, shareware and expensive ones) which would serve you very well. Basically all you need is a recording function and some simple functions to properly trim the file. Every audio editor will do that trick. The last step will be to encode the wav file to an mp3 file. You'll need an mp3 encoder for that purpose, for instance "lame", but many others would work as well. Some of the better audio editors have internal mp3 support so you can directly convert the files to mp3 from the audio editor. You may want to play arround a bit with the mp3 settings. As a guideline, take the bit rate as high as your space limitations permit and I'd suggest to uses a variable Bitrate (at a high level). This usually gives very good results. There's a lot of information on this (mp3 encoders, bitrate, audio editors) available on the net.